Chapter 6 Chapter 2 The Origin of the Word

For aristocratic men in the Zhou Dynasty, 20 years old was considered an adult.At the age of 20, a coronation ceremony is held.It is to tie up the hanging hair, put it on the top of the head, put on the crown, and use the hairpin to fix the crown and the bun [jiji] together, and then the crowned guest selected through divination will give a word according to the meaning of his name Since then, he has been included in the ranks of "husbands".This is what is said in "Book of Rites · Qu Lishang" that "Men are crowned with twenty crowns" and "Gu Liang Biography · Wen Gong Twelve Years" said "Men are crowned at twenty, crowned with husbands".

Why do men have to "crown and character" when they become adults?Because the name was given by his father and used when he was a child; when he grows up, it is not appropriate for others to call him by his name, so he has to choose another word. "Book of Rites Guanyi" said: "It is the way to become an adult if you have crowned it." There is another reason.Zhou people have the custom of avoiding taboos. After a person dies, in order to show respect for him, he is no longer called by his name.For the long-term plan, so when you become an adult, you should "respect your name".

However, "Book of Rites·Guanyi" also said that once the crown is used, "then you can be a person; you can be a person, and then you can rule people."It turns out that "Guan Er Zi" is not just a "respectful name", but also has a deep meaning.It is an expression of the recognition and acceptance of an adult male as a full member of the aristocratic class. From then on, he can be allowed to "rule people".No wonder people in Zhou regard crown ceremony so solemnly and regard it as "the beginning of ceremony"! Time has changed and the world has changed, and it has developed to future generations. The Shiqing Shilu system no longer exists, and the deep meaning of the characters has been filtered out.People choose characters just to participate in social communication, so there is no need to hold a grand ceremony.Since the Han Dynasty, crown princes have held crown ceremonies, and they can still vaguely see the shadow of "ruling people", but the scholar-bureaucrat class rarely follows the ancient times.We can see from Liu Zongyuan's "Answer to Wei Zhongli's Discussion on the Book of Teachers and Taoism" that at least since the Tang Dynasty, even those who knew books and respected rituals felt that it was out of date to hold crown ceremonies to select characters.

The selection of characters was originally a privilege of the aristocratic class, but later it was extended to the intellectual class, and the general working people of the lower class were not allowed to "get their hands on it".In the Song Dynasty, people in the lower class were not allowed to use characters.In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were three teachings and nine streams, five elements and eight works, and almost no one had no words.Although it was criticized and ridiculed by literati and bureaucrats, the custom of choosing characters was still widely promoted. In the pre-Qin period, the characters were given by the selected guests when the crown ceremony was held. Later generations did not hold the crown ceremony, and the characters were given by the ancestors, teachers, or other people who were proficient in writing and ink, and not all of them had reached adulthood. It was only started, and it is likely that the nickname, the big name and the character were all started together.Of course, there are also people who ask someone to write after they grow up.There are quite a few articles in your anthology, and there are often articles with topics such as "words", which are all "content introductions" that replace people with words, or "instructions for word selection".

The ancient aristocratic woman originally also started writing. "Book of Rites · Qu Lishang" says: "When a woman promises to marry, she will marry her with a hairpin [jiji]." That is to say, when a woman is an adult and betrothed to someone else, she puts her hair on top of her head, pins it with a hairpin, and gives it to her. Character.This etiquette system was not inherited in the Qin and Han Dynasties.Although some of the upper-class women have both names and characters, but it is not necessarily "Xu married Ji and the characters".The majority of women generally have only one nickname (boudoir name) from childhood to adulthood.However, although this etiquette system has not been implemented, many idioms have been left in Chinese.For example, if a woman has a husband's family, it is called "Jizi", "Jiziren"; if she does not find her husband's family, it is called "Waizi boudoir", "Weiziren", "Weizi".